


The World Will Follow After

by Ghost_in_the_Hella



Series: To All of You (prompt fills) [13]
Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Implied Drug Use, Past Suicide, amberpricefield, referenced nudity, the unintended consequences of photo jumping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:42:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27880958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghost_in_the_Hella/pseuds/Ghost_in_the_Hella
Summary: “Here,” the unfamiliar voice says, and Max finds herself accepting a tissue from a stranger’s hand. It’s a lovely hand: tanned even though it must be February, elegant fingers with chipped black nailpolish, delicate and strong at the same time. The perfume dabbed on the stranger’s wrist smells gently of jasmine.---Max returns from a desperate photo jump to find herself in circumstances she had never anticipated.
Relationships: Rachel Amber/Maxine "Max" Caulfield/Chloe Price
Series: To All of You (prompt fills) [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1656067
Comments: 16
Kudos: 84





	The World Will Follow After

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rainboq](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainboq/gifts).



> Rainboq prompted me on tumblr with "Is that blood?" and amberpricefield. Title from the Counting Crows song Accidentally in Love.
> 
> CW for blood, referenced general death, and moderately descriptive past suicide. Proceed with caution.

“Is that blood?” 

Max doesn’t recognize the woman’s voice. Everything around her is blurred into a haze, soft around the edges like she’s looking through an unfocused lens; blue and gold and sunset orange. Returning from a photo jump is a bit like surfacing after being underwater. And this time, Max has been underwater for two years.

Hands close on Max’s shoulders. A finger touches under her chin, tilts her head. “Shit, Max, are you okay?”

That voice, Max recognizes. She almost weeps with relief at the sound of it. “Chloe,” she gasps. When her vision comes into focus, it’s on a face she never thought she’d see again. “Chloe,” she sobs again like it’s a prayer, tangling her fingers in blue and violet hair, pulling Chloe closer to her, tears spilling from her eyes and blurring everything again. “Chloe, Chloe, Chloe…”

Chloe’s arms wrap around her and she’s home again, surrounded by Chloe’s warmth and comfortingly familiar smell. Max’s nose is still bleeding slightly, but she can’t stop herself from burying her face in Chloe’s chest and letting her rock her gently in her arms the way she used to do when Max would wake from night terrors. 

She never thought she’d get to be held like this again. Not after… Not after that horrible morning. Not after the worst day of her life.

It had been unbearable to see Chloe die over and over that October, killed by bullets, by trains, by whatever the universe had felt like throwing at her. It was worse to see Chloe curled up on the floor of their bathroom in their small Santa Monica apartment with an empty pill bottle resting near her head and foam dried on her cold, blue lips. Cold already by the time Max found her. Much too late to rewind, though Max tried. Rewound again and again until she bled, rewound until her powers sputtered and failed. They’d stayed gone for days, not a flicker of power as Max sleepwalked numbly through funeral preparations, through packing up her life and moving back to Seattle.

They returned the day the numbness broke, cracking like an eggshell to spill forth the yolk of Max’s anger. Her anger and her determination.

Max has always been a shutterbug. It didn’t take her long to find a photograph old enough, once she knew what she was looking for. 

“Here,” the unfamiliar voice says, and Max finds herself accepting a tissue from a stranger’s hand. It’s a lovely hand: tanned even though it must be February, elegant fingers with chipped black nailpolish, delicate and strong at the same time. The perfume dabbed on the stranger’s wrist smells gently of jasmine. 

A picture from 2012. A picture, more importantly, taken before Rachel Amber went missing. If Chloe couldn’t bear to live in a world with so much loss, then Max would give her a world with less. Even if it meant that she would never be with Chloe - would never live with her, would possibly never even see her again - at least it might be a world in which Chloe could be alive. 

Max dazedly pats the tissue against her own upper lip, and she stares at the woman in front of her. Max has only seen her in photographs before. The photographs were beautiful, but they didn’t do her justice. “Rachel Amber…”

The woman’s brow furrows slightly in concern. “What’s up, Max?” She laughs a bit nervously. “Should I be worried you last-named me? Am I in trouble?”

Max never thought she’d get to meet Rachel Amber. She definitely never thought she’d see her naked.

The rush of blood to Max’s cheeks nearly sets her nose bleeding again.

“Haven’t seen you with a nosebleed since you were a kid,” Chloe mumbles, picking up the bloodied tissue that’s tumbled from Max’s fingers. “You didn’t hit your head or anything, did you?”

“I’m fine,” Max whispers. She’s on a bed, she realizes. One of the tiny, hard beds of the Blackwell dorms. She must’ve still gotten into Blackwell in this reality. Still reconnected with Chloe. And met Rachel Amber.

Blackwell is still standing. Which means that Arcadia Bay is still standing. Which means that… “We’re all fine,” Max says, stunned. “Aren’t we?”

“Uh, yeah, apart from your nosebleed.” Chloe kisses Max on the forehead, and oh, Max has missed that. She nearly melts under the familiar touch.

“Also, I think the lightweight miiiiiiiiight’ve smoked too much,” Rachel adds, climbing onto the bed with a teasing smile. It’s much too small for the three of them. It creaks a noisy protest. She pokes Max’s shoulder with easy familiarity.

“Y-yeah,” Max agrees, even though she doesn’t feel high at all. She can taste smoke on her tongue, but she’s smoked with Chloe a few times before she– _before_ , and she knows that she’s lightly buzzed at most. 

It’s her own room at Blackwell, she realizes as she looks around. Those are her lights strung up around the bed. Her photo wall beside the bed, except that some of the photographs are different. Quite a few of them, actually. She leans over to get a better look. Pictures of Chloe. Pictures of Rachel. Pictures of the three of them together: walking in the woods, sitting by the lighthouse, hanging out in the junkyard. 

Max sitting on Chloe’s lap. Chloe with Rachel asleep against her shoulder. Max taking a selfie, startled by Rachel photobombing her with a kiss. Chloe smirking while Max and Rachel each kiss one of her cheeks. A closeup of their hands, fingers linked together - pale blue nails, black nails, unpainted nails chewed to the quick…

Holy shit. “We’re _together_?!” Max blurts out, unable to contain her shock. 

“Uhhhhh.” Chloe chuckles nervously. “I mean, I sure hope so? Otherwise this would be hella awkward.”

Max pulls back enough to get a good look at Chloe, and oh. Oh, shit. Rachel’s not the only one underdressed. Chloe’s wearing nothing but a pair of boxers, and as for Max herself– oh, shit. Max yanks a sheet over herself, because otherwise she’d be wearing nothing but her blush. 

“Did you hit your head?” Rachel asks with growing concern, sweeping back Max’s bangs to check her forehead for bumps.

“No,” Max says, gathering her breath. “Well, at least, I don’t think so.” She takes a moment to collect herself and process the evidence of this new reality her photo jump created. Okay. Her jump was successful in saving Rachel, Chloe, and presumably Arcadia Bay. And somehow while she was on autopilot for those two years, she managed to not only get Chloe back as a friend but as a lover. And Rachel.

She looks at the two women before her: Chloe looking healthy and robust in a way that Max hasn’t seen since she left for Seattle five years ago, Rachel looking more radiant than she had even in Max’s imaginings and Chloe’s pictures. Both watching her and looking concerned as fuck.

“So,” Max says, “there’s a reason why I’m acting strange. I owe you both an explanation, and… it’s going to be a hard one to believe.” She clears her throat and tugs the blanket a little higher up. “And then, I suspect, there’s a lot you’ll need to explain to me.”

“…Sounds like this could take a while,” Chloe says seriously.

Max nods her head. “Yeah. Definitely.”

Rachel rises to her feet, pulling on a loose-fitting t-shirt that Max recognizes as one of her own. “Well, in that case,” Rachel says, “I’d better put on some coffee.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Rain for the prompt and to all of you for reading! HMU on tumblr for more promptastic goodness. If you enjoyed, please drop me a comment and/or kudos!


End file.
